Mythic Entertainment is no more. The studio behind Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has been closed by Electronic Arts after almost 20 years of game development.
EA confirmed the studio’s closure earlier today in a statement to Kotaku.
“We are closing the EA Mythic location in Fairfax, Virginia, as we concentrate mobile development in our other studio locations,” said EA. “We are working with all impacted employees to provide assistance in finding new opportunities, either within EA or with other companies via an upcoming job fair.”
Officially created in 1995 (though it wouldn’t become Mythic Entertainment until 1997), the studio is most known for creating Dark Age of Camelot, which featured a PvP system that’s still aped by MMOs today.
While the studio was unable to replicate the success of Dark Age of Camelot, it also created Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning which helped popularise the public quest feature that now makes up the bulk of quests in Guild Wars 2 and has seen use in several other MMOs.
Warhammer was shut down in December last year, but Dark Age of Camelot persists. Mythic handed over the reigns of DAoC earlier this year to Broadsword Online Games.
Since EA acquired the studio in 2006, it’s not had much luck. Warhammer Online quickly lost subscribers, and Mythic combined with BioWare, ostensibly to create an MMO/RPG superteam. Mythic helped out a bit with Star Wars: The Old Republic, but nothing else appeared to come out of the merging. Later that year, a number of Mythic employees were laid off.
Mythic’s final game is unlikely the legacy the studio wanted to leave behind. The mobile Dungeon Keeper was panned for it’s heavy handed microtransaction model and it’s absurd restrictions.
Hopefully it will be remembered more for Dark Age of Camelot.
Cheers, Kotaku.